Customer Reviews

Image of the Beast

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I've ever read. Having written the above, I feel compelled to add that "strange" is a criminal understatement and that no amount of extreme adjectives can do justice to this book. The copy I have is coupled with "Blown," the completion of the story begun with "Image of the Beast." I made the mistake of reading this when I was sick a few years back, unable to do anything, feeling as though I was on my deathbed, and soon feared that this hellish, disturbing, nightmare-inducing, stomach-turning THING was the last thing I would ever read. I think it actually made me sicker.

Don't take all of the above as a dismissal, though. I've never taken the time to really pick apart the mechanism that makes this book run (I don't have that strong of a stomach), but there is something underneath all the horror and sex and violence that just pulls you along. Farmer takes the sexual themes of some of his earlier works and goes waaaaaaay over the top with them. It really messes with you in a number of different ways.

Fans of the Riverworld series and some of Farmer's other novels should be warned about this book before reading it. Although it has a number of elements that are representative of some of his major themes, it is like nothing else he has ever written. Nothing can prepare you for reading this, and once you've read it, you'll never be able to forget it.

I read this book perhaps 15 years ago; it is a re-print, I believe, of an old story of Farmer's called "Blown." (More on that title later.) Fans of P.J. Farmer are familiar with his fascinating attempts to meld canonical fantasy/horror figures with a more current perspective, while throwing in kinky sex and a strong sci-fi overlay. This is a "textbook" example. The protagonist is Harold Childe, a private detective in what appears to be 1980's Los Angeles. He doesn't know it, but "Childe Harold" is the re-incarnation of Geoge Gordon, Lord Byron, the sexually irrepressible English Romantic poet. The book opens with Harold and a high-ranking LAPD official watching a film that has been sent to them; the film depicts, in horrifying detail, the mutilation/murder of a buddy of Harold's. The victim is tied down, an attractive young woman fellates him, and then she slips in a razor-sharp metal mothpiece and bites off the victim's penis, while a male accomplice clad in a Dracula costume looks on. (This scene, redolent of every male's castration nightmares, horrified me as an adolescent; but Farmer, because of his innate skill as a writer, manages to bring it off in a way that is not ludicrous or hackneyed, but rather, for lack of a better term, "gripping" despite its horrific nature.) From there, the story follows Harold's attempts to discover who or what murdered his friend. In the process, Harold encounters a variety of sleazy Hollywood creatures who are not what they seem, including a slutty actress who has a creature living inside her vagina, and that creature turns out to be the re-incarnation of the medieval French general and sadist, Gilles de Railles. (Weird??? Hell, yeah!) Eventually, Harold discovers that this motley gallery of semi-human monsters have extra-terestrial origins, like himself, and that he is the "Captain" for whom they have long waited , to lead them back to their origin in the stars. I've given away entirely too much, but what I found compelling about this book was that Farmer takes a subject matter that lends itself to absurdity and parody, but creates something strong and distinctive, through his own inimitable dark word-craft. Not what you'd necessarily expect from the author of the "Riverworld" series, but certainly intriguing.

I am an avid sci fi reader who only occasionally takes the plunge to read in the horror genre. While I loved Farmer's Riverworld, I went on to read Image Of the Beast - only to discover a demented twisted world which even 20 years later is still the subject of my occasional nightmare. I have never read or seen anything half as horribly stomach-turning as this story and am continually surprised it has not been made into a horror movie yet. For those who seek horror filled stories, I'm sure you will enjoy this. But take warning! This is not for the meek of heart.

Though I read the 1979 Playboy Press edition of IMAGE OF THE BEAST, which was merged with its sequel BLOWN, and though I published my review for it on its page, I am also publishing my review here on the pages for the newer 2007 edition. I believe there is no change in the story's text. The Book Description for the 2007 edition says that BLOWN is included. The 2007 edition has only 255 pages, compared to 336 in the 1979 edition, but the 2007 paperback has bigger dimensions. If you have the 2007 edition, check the last sentence (it will not spoil the story). If it reads, "Could Dr. Jekyll get rid of Mr. Hyde?", then you do have the full story, including both IMAGE OF THE BEAST and BLOWN.

IMAGE OF THE BEAST (merged in this volume with its sequel BLOWN) is a blend of horror and science fiction. Be advised that the explicit sex will cause some readers to consider the book pornographic. To an extent, the explicitness is necessary for the author to generate appropriate atmosphere. But, as fond as I am of Philip José Farmer, he goes beyond that here, an excess that proves boring. Only intermittently, however; so I lower my rating by only one star.

If you skim through the sex (or if you don't mind it), the plot is absorbing and the pace moves forward briskly. In Los Angeles in the 1970s, the hero Herald Childe is with a group of policemen as they view a home video of a sexy, very bloody, and very unusual homicide. Childe is a private detective, and the victim is his partner. Because the L.A. basin is beset with successive disasters of smog and flood, and because evidence is so scanty, manpower shortage compels the police department to allow Childe to investigate the murder on his own.

He encounters werewolves, a vampire, and other weird creatures. But if you are a science fiction fan who has no taste for horror, be patient. Eventually the story moves toward science fiction. That is, a sort of schlocky science fiction, closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs than Arthur C. Clarke.

Forrest J Ackerman, a real-life person, plays a supporting role in the story. So much so that I suppose Farmer knew him well enough to avoid any civil litigation. Check out Ackerman's biography at the Internet's Wikipedia. Though IMAGE OF THE BEAST gives us a good number of other colorful characters, none are given in depth. This was typical of Farmer, who wrote short novels with the flair of a master of pulp fiction.

It is good to know it is possible to be surprised by Philip Jose Farmer.

Farmer had two mixed genre pornographic novels that I'm aware of. "A Feast Unknown" pitted Doc Savage against Tarzan in a mildly pornographic fight to the death. "Image of the Beast," with its title from the Book of Revelation, is a nicely pornographic gothic novel with an interweaving of bad science-fiction overtones. "Blown," the sequel, rather ruins the effect of the main novel, actually. Farmer's imagination ruins his art in the sequel. I've known several people who found the more sadistic scenes in "Image" to be arousing.